2015 Women of Color at Penn (WOCAP) Honorees
Regina Austin: Helen O. Dickens Honoree
Frances Aulston: Community Honoree
Maritza Santiago-Torres: Staff Honoree
Mounica Gummadi: Undergraduate Honoree
Zia Okocha: Graduate Student Honoree
Akeesha Washington: Graduate Student Honoree
Regina Austin: Helen O. Dickens Honoree
Regina Austin is the William A. Schnader Professor of Law and director of the Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law. She is the author of numerous articles related to the impact of race, class and gender discrimination on economic status. In addition to teaching substantive law courses on torts, Professor Austin teaches Law and Documentary Media and the Visual Legal Advocacy seminar, in which law students make short advocacy documentaries on behalf of social justice clients and causes. The videos are available on the program’s website at https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/documentaries/ and on YouTube. The program regularly hosts roundtables and screenings to generate interest in nonfiction law-related advocacy filmmaking among public interest practitioners, community members and law students. The proceedings of the Roundtable on “Preparing to Protest” were turned into a multi-part series for PhillyCAM, Philadelphia’s public access station. The program also maintains an archive of clemency videos, which it makes available to attorneys defending defendants in death penalty cases.
Since joining Penn’s faculty in 1977, she has served on numerous law school and University-wide committees dealing with minority and gender diversity and affirmative action with regard to both students and faculty. She is a member of the Senate Committee on Faculty Development, Diversity and Equity and the University Council Committee on Diversity and Equity.
Since 2008, Professor Austin has been a member of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, the agency that enforces the Fair Practices Ordinance of the City of Philadelphia (the City’s civil rights law) and promotes intergroup relations. She deployed the resources of the Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law to film the 11 public hearings that led to the issuance of the Commission’s groundbreaking 2011 report, “Widening the Circle of Our Concern: Public Perceptions of the School District of Philadelphia’s Response to Intergroup Conflicts” and the accompanying short video, which she narrated. The Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law also co-produced a short historical video undertaken to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Commission.
Frances Aulston: Community Honoree
Frances Aulston is the founder and executive director of the West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (WPCA). A seasoned community leader and activist and former research librarian for the Free Library of Philadelphia, Ms. Aulston founded WPCA in 1984 with the assistance of several local artists. The mission of WPCA is to stimulate public interest, understanding and support for the arts in the Greater Philadelphia area. Under her leadership, WPCA is a respected cultural and community organization in Philadelphia.
Ms. Aulston is a founding member of ArtsWest (the West Philadelphia Partners for the Arts) and is currently on the Board of Directors and Advisories of numerous organizations, including the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania; the Enterprise Center Community Advisory Board; the Young Men’s Christian Association, West Philadelphia Branch; and the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. She has lectured at events sponsored by Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Society of Fundraising Executives.
Ms. Aulston has been instrumental in having the West Philadelphia residence of legendary performer and human rights activist Paul Leroy Robeson preserved as a historical house museum. Under her leadership, the Paul Robeson House has gained prominence as a historical site. The House is now listed as an African American historical site in the National Register of Historic Places and is eligible for National Landmark status. It was designated an official project of Save America’s Treasures, a national program of the White House Millennium Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Maritza Santiago-Torres: Staff Honoree
Never satisfied to be a perfunctory employee, during her 18 years of employment at Penn, Maritza Santiago-Torres has worked above and beyond her position description in service to students and staff, especially the Hispanic community. Ms. Santiago-Torres’s numerous service endeavors include the founding, implementation and growth of the Center for Hispanic Excellence: La Casa Latina. While searches for senior staff were conducted during the 15-year history of La Casa Latina, she was often the sole staff member. She worked with the Center’s advisory board and students to ensure that operations, programs and services continued unabated.
Recognizing a need to assist students facing extreme family and personal emergencies, Ms. Santiago-Torres worked in collaboration with the Association of Latino Alumni to establish a student emergency fund for unexpected circumstances. She was also instrumental in creating the Emergency Book Fund at La Casa Latina to help students purchase course books they cannot afford.
In recognition of her outstanding service as a mentor, counselor and guide to students and colleagues, she has received the Asociación de Estudiantes Latino Americano’s Art of Giving award, Sigma Lambda Upsilon’s Unsung Hero award, the Association of Latino Alumni’s Outstanding Service award and recently, La Casa Latina’s 15th Anniversary Service Recognition Award. She was also named an honorary member of the Cipactli Latino Honor Society.
Students, their family members and alumni frequently seek her out to thank her for her support, friendship and kindness. Her values include tireless service to her community, Penn’s larger communities and all people with sincerity and dedication.
Mounica Gummadi: Undergraduate Honoree
Mounica Gummadi is a senior majoring in biological basis of behavior with minors in anthropology and health care management. From Charlotte, North Carolina, she had her first introduction to the West Philadelphia community as a participant in the PennCORP Pre-Orientation Program, where she learned about the many ways to become involved in service at Penn. During her freshman year, Ms. Gummadi joined the Moelis Access Science program at the Netter Center for Community Partnerships to better understand and serve her new community and to share her love for the sciences. As a biology fellow, she helped to implement hands-on labs and activities that would make the content more engaging and interesting for West Philadelphia high school students. That summer, as a participant in the Netter Center’s Penn Program for Public Service (PPPS), she received the opportunity to teach full-time at Alexander Wilson Community School. Through PPPS, she fully immersed herself in the subject of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education to research strategies to engage students in these fields and to strengthen the pipeline to higher education and careers in STEM.
Ms. Gummadi is a civic development intern and a member of the leadership team of Moelis Access Science. She is a six-year hospice volunteer and has led the Student Hospice Organization of Penn as president for the past three years. She serves as the Netter Center Student Advisory Board chair. She hopes to pursue a career in the medical field and to continue to integrate service, education, leadership and the sciences.
Zia Okocha: Graduate Student Honoree
Zia Okocha is the child of Nigerian immigrants from a small rural town in Southeastern Wisconsin. She began serving her community as a volunteer while in high school and continued as an undergraduate mentor at Harvard. Now a student in the Perelman School of Medicine, Ms. Okocha has been actively involved in the Philadelphia community through Penn and other organizations. She has served as a coordinator for medical school volunteer tutors at Lea Elementary in West Philadelphia; volunteered for Puentes de Salud, a center that primarily serves a Spanish-speaking population; and participated in Cut Hypertension, a program that visits local barbershops to measure and provide counseling on blood pressure. She mentors a high school student through Philadelphia Futures, a program aimed at preparing students to matriculate and graduate from post-secondary school. She informally mentors underclassmen in the medical school.
Ms. Okocha continues to demonstrate a commitment to service. She is actively engaged in bringing attention to the need for safe spaces for individuals of color within the medical school and is currently spearheading a project to provide medical students with pet therapy. Further, she is working to improve the health of people of color both locally and globally.
Akeesha Washington: Graduate Student Honoree
Akeesha Washington is an agent of change. For more than ten years, she has advocated for those unable to advocate for themselves. She has worked to develop new programs to support adult literacy in Philadelphia, provide recovery-oriented care to youth and adults suffering from addiction and deliver counseling interventions to veterans pursuing career goals.
When Ms. Washington arrived at Penn, she recognized the need to advocate for students and sought to promote energetic engagement of pluralism and understanding for the graduate population. She has served as Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GAPSA) vice chair for equity and access. She is deputy to the GAPSA vice chair for equity and access and acts as a student advisor to affinity and international groups to ensure that outreach expands across campus and that the institutional history of graduate students of color is recorded and maintained. With other graduate students, she has worked to establish the Black Graduate Women’s Association, which addresses the needs of graduate women of color on campus. She is not only a mentor but also an inspiration to many other young women of color. |
